


truth is like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold

by jameaterblues



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Consent, Dead Poets Society (1989) - Freeform, F/M, Good will hunting - Freeform, Partial Nudity, Saying "No" To Sex, robin williams - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26114479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jameaterblues/pseuds/jameaterblues
Summary: Lorelai’s out on a date, so Rory's pulling the hermit thing while watching Dead Poets Society. But Jess is at the door - maybe they’re back on the on-ramp for basic boy/girl stuff? Somewhere after 3x15.title comes from Todd's poem in the film.
Relationships: Rory Gilmore & Jess Mariano, Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	truth is like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold

**Author's Note:**

> trying to write this to both build on Rory's frustration during "Face Off" and build up to the fight in "Say Goodnight, Gracie" around their relationship - elements of both, I guess? still unsure about how to tag things, still new to this fic writing. comments and advice appreciated!

_ DINNNNG! _

Rory jumped up from the couch to get the door, surprised to hear the doorbell ring. Hardly anybody in Stars Hollow used doorbells. It was small-town Connecticut - the door was always open anyway, though most people had the courtesy to knock. 

She walked to the door, opening to a brooding Jess.

“Can I come in?” His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, looking almost ashamed to be standing at her doorstep. He’d parked the car in the driveway - bold, seeing as Babette would surely tell Lorelai that he’d stopped over. 

Rory opened her mouth to say something, still somewhat bewildered to see him there. They’d quarrelled earlier that day at the diner - her asking if he could join her with Lane to the hockey game hadn’t gone over as well - but even she was over that. This looked serious. 

She wanted to say,  _ What, no black eye this time?  _

She wanted to say,  _ No apology? _

She wanted to say,  _ You could’ve called first.  _

She wanted to say,  _ What’s wrong? _

But sometimes he was just like that, just showing up.

“Yeah,” she nodded, pursing her lips. She stood out of the way to let him in, and he stomped his past her. She closed the door and dutifully followed to sit down beside him on the couch. 

“What are we watching?” he said.

“ _ Dead Poets Society _ ,” said Rory, snuggling into him. “Neil just got the role, and they’re all celebrating.”

“Good choice. Is that before the yawp?”

“Before. That comes next. ”

“Have you got a Mr. Keating at that fancy school of yours?”

“But he’s already done the ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ bit?” 

“Yeah. One of his finer moments, don’t you think?”

“I dunno, I think he’s better in  _ Good Will Hunting _ .”

“Aw, my boy’s wicked smaht,” Rory said, trying out an ill-conceived Matt Damon impersonation. 

“Wrong character,” Jess said, “and don’t you even try with that Boston accent, Gilmore. We don’t stand for that in this relationship.” 

“What are you going to do when I’m a Harvard girl next year?”

“Well, maybe you can change my mind about Harvard people,” he said, wrapping his arm around her & pulling her closer. She felt him opening up a bit more with the banter, the mood of the room lightening. She was still curious what had brought him for the night.  _ Something at school? A falling-out with Luke? A call from his mom? _

She still wondered as she went in to kiss his cheek, just after Todd finished his poem in the movie and Mr. Keating whispered  _ don’t you forget this  _ in his ear. Jess seemed eager to return the favor, and the two of them quickly fell into , only to come up for air as Knox started calling Chris about the party. Both of them lying on the couch, entangled in each other, it felt like any other movie night. 

Rory was pretty immersed in the film - she did have a soft spot for Puck’s monologue in _A_ _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ anyway, and Robert Sean Leonard did a fantastic job. She could almost But she felt Jess getting antsy as Neil reached the end, running his fingers through her hair. Their usual routine, brought on by Luke’s incessant check-ins, had gotten them very much into a solid eight-minute cycle of making out, stopping briefly, and then falling back into the rhythm of each other. 

They slowly started the cycle again, though the idea of them getting to second base as Neil killed himself seemed gauche. And besides - despite Jess’s bad mood earlier, she  _ was  _ happy to see him. They didn’t get many chances alone, never mind the opportunity to be together on furniture other than couches or air mattresses. 

“Do you want to - move from the couch?” she asked timidly. 

“Oh captain, my captain,” Jess snickered. Rory untangled herself from him, reaching for the remote and shutting off the TV. Standing up from the couch, she reached a hand back down to Jess, leading him to her bedroom. 

Instinctively, she turned on the light upon entering - seemed a little ridiculous, considering how dark the living room had been. She winced at the bright light. “I can turn it off.”

He flipped it off for her, taking a seat on the bed. 

She straddled him carefully - there was a certain excitement to doing this in the dark, in being on top of him like so. His hands dove under her shirt, and she lifted her arms up for him to take it off her. She could tell he was surprised - they didn’t get many opportunities for clothing removal at Luke’s, and certainly not here. But now they had what felt like all the time in the world. 

With one hand, he deftly unhooked her bra, the other cupping her breast and giving a gentle squeeze. As she took a deep breath and rocked forward, she wrapped an arm around his neck, and looked out over his shoulder as he pushed his face into her breasts. She felt a sudden twinge in her stomach - something they hadn’t done before, that felt utterly grown-up in comparison to their previous efforts. When his mouth no longer made contact she rocked back to kiss him, looking down on his face stuck in what seemed like drunken wonder. 

“Not so fast,” she whispered.  _ If I’m topless, he should be, too.  _ She repeated the ritual by removing his shirt, yanking it up to reveal his abs. His arms dutifully lifted up, and as she pulled it over his head, his face changed into a trickster smile like he was proud to see this from her. She kissed him, letting her fingers trace down his torso before pressing her chest against his. It felt good to press skin to skin - in her own room, in her own bed.

He tugged at her shorts - not necessarily trying to remove them, just trying to grab onto something. She stood up, feeling confident, trying to find his eyes in the darkness. She started performing a slow strip tease as she unbuttoned her jeans, pulled down the zipper, and then plunged her thumbs into the side to pull them down. She almost tripped stepping out of them -  _ so much for the sexiness _ \- but the slight giggle she let out as she crawled back onto the bed brought back the giddiness and excitement. Moments later, Jess followed suit. He seemed to relish in this newfound bravery of Rory’s, making it just as much of a show for her as she had made it for him. When they met back on the bed, their chemistry felt like a secret blossoming between them. It felt real, and it felt good. 

After awhile - she couldn’t tell time in these moments - Jess got up from the bed. In the dark, she could just make out his outline as he stood to remove his boxers. As he left the bed, she felt the tension rise throughout the room, like some magical barrier had been crossed as this penultimate piece of clothing between them was removed. She couldn’t actually see much in this lighting, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to look below his waist anyway. But there, in the shadow, as she watched him undress, she shivered in anticipation.

He crawled back onto the bed, back on top of her, where she could just make out his crooked smile. There weren’t any words between them, but he looked - maybe for the first time that night - happy?

As she lifted her knees up into this new position, she could feel him up against her groin. They’d never been this close before, now only one layer between them. Suddenly the dependable cheeky underwear seemed like nothing. And she couldn’t -  _ I promised Mom  _ \- and she didn’t -  _ do I?  _ \- and she felt her breathing start to quicken, her heart start to race, her body start to tremble -  _ maybe  _ \- and it wasn’t just her and Jess together anymore in this little sort of ecstasy, she could hear the sounds of the springs in her bed and the heat of the sheets and the thoughts that been floating between them suddenly all coming into focus - and she thought about earlier, when he had showed up at the door -  _ why did you come here?  _ \- and she thought of what might happen if she did just keep going -  _ I want  _ \- how sometimes they had kept going, clothes on -  _ last week  _ \- and she thought about what might happen if she did say stop, she hadn’t had to tell him to stop before -  _ I don’t  _ \- and she felt him press into her, the layer feeling like nothing now -  _ oh  _ \- and she felt him take her hand and slowly guide it down the length of his body, down to his - 

“I don’t want to do this,” she gasped, inadvertently pushing him as her body shuddered. There was instant relief in just letting words out of her, in letting the moment not just happen. 

“Okay,” he said, practically jumping off her and off the bed. It was surprising to her how easy it was to say  _ no _ , and how quickly he responded. She hadn’t had to say  _ no _ before - they’d fooled around a little bit, for sure, and while she sometimes felt uncomfortable, her curiosity usually got the best of her. As she laid on the bed, she watched him reach down and pull his boxers back up, trying to look for a sign of something in his face, before he came to lie on the bed.

They laid next to each other, both stripped to their underwear, as much space as there could be in the twin size bed. In the deafening silence between them, the room came back to life: she could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the next room, the faint sound of Babette and Morey’s TV playing some late-night cable. She avoided looking at him, waiting for her breath to catch back up to a normal speed. 

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have to say sorry.”

“You don’t - ”

“I’m just not - ”

“Ready,” he said, tracing the outline of her chin with his thumb. “It’s fine.”

“Yeah,” she said, not sure if she meant it as a question or a statement. They locked eyes for a moment, and she found herself reading into them, trying to figure out 

But then he blinked, and started moving. “I should probably get going,” he said. “Your mom will be home soon.”

“We could just go back out to the couch, finish the movie,” Rory said, pleading with him. She wasn’t ready for him to leave just yet, but she also didn’t know how they could go on from here. They had crossed a sort of line, into a space of uncertainty and reality. 

But he was already sitting up, pulling away from her. “I’ll catch you tomorrow. I’ve got a shift early anyway,” he said, pulling up his jeans and finagling with the button. 

“Okay,” she said quietly, barely hiding the disappointment.  _ Wasn’t he supposed to say something more? Wasn’t it supposed to feel better than this? Simpler? Less complicated? _

She stood up to meet him, feeling embarrassed trying to get dressed in the dark. As she pulled on her pajama pants, he handed her a shirt - couldn’t tell if it was the one she had been wearing before. Once she pulled it on, tugging it to get it just right, she halfheartedly smiled at him. He brought his hands to her waist, and she wrapped around her own around his neck. 

“Goodnight,” she said to him between kisses. 

“Night, Rory,” he said, one last kiss to the cheek before leaving the room. 

She sat back down on the bed, listening to him open the front door and close it. She heard him get into his car, it starting up with a grunt, and then pulling away onto the road. She didn’t know how long she sat there on the bed in the darkness, replaying the night over in her mind without knowing what she was looking for.  _ Him arriving at the door, them bantering about Matt Damon, the giggle and the sexiness of climbing into her bed _ \- the whole thing rushed together like a VHS on fast-forward, like she could stop herself in the cycle and find the moment where it was okay. She didn’t know why she felt shameful when she’d done everything right - and he’d done everything right, she thought, even stopped when she asked him to. But she still felt like some kind of barrier.

She stayed like that until she heard Lorelai’s Jeep come up the driveway, its lights shining into her window. Slowly, Rory tucked herself into bed, fully clothed. Head on the pillow, she closed her eyes and listened as Lorelai stepped onto the porch, pushed the keys into the lock, and opened the door. 


End file.
